I just looked up a random textbook of mine. New, it sells for $102. On the Kindle, it sells for $43. Does that make your point moot?
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Amazon Launches Kindle DX eBook Reader with 9.7" Screen
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I just looked up a random textbook of mine. New, it sells for $102. On the Kindle, it sells for $43. Does that make your point moot?
Link.
The Kindle 2 costs $185, or more than an iPhone, to make. The screen panel alone costs $60.
Probably not. But honestly, it's so easy to convert them, either for free through Amazon's e-mail service or using Mac/PC software like Calibre, that it hardly matters.
Colleges could easily fold the cost of a Kindle DX into tuition, as some colleges do for the gratis laptops they hand out to their students. Imagine if each student received a Kindle DX their freshman year, and every class had a registered 'stack' of books that they could easily purchase and download through an Amazon portal?
And if the books only cost 25-50% of what they did for physical copies, I don't think there'd be much complaining.
I don't deal with theories of education, but I see two preconditions for this to revolutionize college campuses:
1. It's led by publishers and universities in some sort of huge volume licensing that takes place, in a similar manner that some publishing houses have journal packages. Amazon can't do it with the device itself.
2. Start with first graders, and get an entire generation starting to learn with this type of reader. Getting students to change the entire way they interact with books so late in the process just seems to be too large of a structural challenge to overcome.
A decade from now there might be inroads.
I will concede the point as moot if Pearson or Wiley are willing to sell their entire catalog of textbooks as Kindle versions at 50% of the cost of a print version.
Edit: We are also neglecting the entire issue of students buying used textbooks and then reselling used textbooks.
If Apple partners up with Pixel Qi...
If Apple partners up with Pixel Qi, it will blow this thing away. I applaud Amazon for pushing ebooks so hard but current readers remain so "1.0".
Now if that rumored iTabled/iPad/iCoffeetableBook could have a screen from Pixel Qi, there are millions to be made. All the benefits of color and e-ink, video, fast refresh rates,... WWDC should be here already!
If Apple partners up with Pixel Qi, it will blow this thing away. I applaud Amazon for pushing ebooks so hard but current readers remain so "1.0".
Now if that rumored iTabled/iPad/iCoffeetableBook could have a screen from Pixel Qi, there are millions to be made. All the benefits of color and e-ink, video, fast refresh rates,... WWDC should be here already!
Oh god please no. I would never have bought one if they did that. The last thing I need is another damn monthly bill.
Read into e-ink displays before making a statement like that. The screens only draw power when changing - not while displaying. A typical e-ink display uses no backlight or frontlight and can be easily viewed from almost any angle and under virtually any lighting condition - A big difference then a "gameboy" screen from the 80's.
Full text articles are free and must be made available to the general public if NIH funds the work, but yes, you need paid access in order to get the pdf version. You get essentially the same information, just in a prettier format. Any serious scientist in a decent research lab has access one way or another and can load the pdfs onto a MBA.
One other aspect for Amazon is that their primary goal is to create the dominate e-format. The kindle is cool but expensive. It may not be intended for a large market share at all, at least short term. If they release/will release kindle for iPhone and iTablet, for PCs, Macs, textbooks, then they win the format war, and will be a dominant content provider into the future.
1) Color e-ink is still in experimental stage of development, there is no eink color screen in production anywhere
2) eINK display is not same thing as 1980's gameboy
3) 500$ for 9.7" screen is actually cheap, there are others that is around 9-10" and sells for 800-1000$
4) Over 70% of Kindle buyers are over the age of 60 (i might have this wrong, i can't remember the numbers but the majority was old people)
5) Some people are not going to always buy books. They may already have the ebook collection, just no device to read it on. Tablets are usually too heavy and don't last long on a charge to be used for reading.
6) Wait a couple of more years, they will continue to get better and cheaper. I'm hoping for 11x8 screen size Kindle for 250$ in a couple of years with color.
7) Somebody mentioned it is easy to convert PDF kindle forgot to mention it doesn't work well with tables and graphics. Having PDF built in Kindle means it should be able to show tables and graphics as it is intended to be shown.
2) eINK display is not same thing as 1980's gameboy
3) 500$ for 9.7" screen is actually cheap, there are others that is around 9-10" and sells for 800-1000$
4) Over 70% of Kindle buyers are over the age of 60 (i might have this wrong, i can't remember the numbers but the majority was old people)
5) Some people are not going to always buy books. They may already have the ebook collection, just no device to read it on. Tablets are usually too heavy and don't last long on a charge to be used for reading.
6) Wait a couple of more years, they will continue to get better and cheaper. I'm hoping for 11x8 screen size Kindle for 250$ in a couple of years with color.
7) Somebody mentioned it is easy to convert PDF kindle forgot to mention it doesn't work well with tables and graphics. Having PDF built in Kindle means it should be able to show tables and graphics as it is intended to be shown.
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I've been contemplating an irex for quite some time, for all of my PDF journals and articles. The DX clocks in about $200 less, which I'm ok with.
I've been contemplating an irex for quite some time, for all of my PDF journals and articles. The DX clocks in about $200 less, which I'm ok with.
Good grief - the pricing is ridiculous. I could buy a poor-quality laptop for that price. I'm sure they're expensive to build, so I suppose it's possible this is just an idea who's time hasn't come yet (like the Newton was); but I suspect these one-function devices will have the tech lifespan of PDAs and have the added drawback of never escaping their niche status.
Agreed, as I mentioned earlier it has the potential to be great but no color and price of textbooks make this a no go on college campuses.
Repeating what I said in another forum, and paraphrasing what SJ said for BR, it's a damn bag of hurt. The Kindle, in any of its variants, is an unremarkable piece of expensive CRAP, despite Amazon's "good" intentions.
Almost 500 dollars for a monochromatic, bulky and extremely limited device? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
And no, comparisons with similar comments for the iPod when it was first launched are not appropriate. The versatility of Apple's media players has been, from day one, WAY higher than that of the Kindle. A nice effort by Amazon, but that's all...no relevant markets are gonna replace their paper matter en masse, and few students will adopt it as the de facto substitute for textbooks.
The Kindle is just a nice device, whose potential will surely be better explored in much better iterations by companies like Apple. The KINDLE IS DEAD.
Almost 500 dollars for a monochromatic, bulky and extremely limited device? ABSOLUTELY NOT.
And no, comparisons with similar comments for the iPod when it was first launched are not appropriate. The versatility of Apple's media players has been, from day one, WAY higher than that of the Kindle. A nice effort by Amazon, but that's all...no relevant markets are gonna replace their paper matter en masse, and few students will adopt it as the de facto substitute for textbooks.
The Kindle is just a nice device, whose potential will surely be better explored in much better iterations by companies like Apple. The KINDLE IS DEAD.